The backlog in dealings at the Land Registry is a "national embarrassment" and is causing a great deal of frustration and annoyance, according to Director General of the Law Society, Mr Ken Murphy.

Mr Murphy said people attempting to sell houses or land frequently experienced long delays in obtaining legal titles and many found it difficult to obtain top-up loans because of the mounting arrears. Many new householders might also be alarmed to hear that months after they purchased their dwellings they still might not be the legal owners of the property, he added.

Figures obtained from the Land Registry show arrears of 85,353 dealings currently waiting to be processed. This represents a jump of 65 per cent on 1998. The average time taken to process a dealing has risen from three to four weeks to as much as seven months in some counties in the past few years.

The huge backlog has caused the Land Registry to reduce to only one hour per day the time it accepts telephone calls from the public at its Dublin Office. This affects all dealings in counties Cavan, Clare, Donegal, Dublin, Galway, Kildare, Leitrim, Longford, Louth, Mayo, Meath, Monaghan, Roscommon, Sligo, Westmeath and Wicklow.

However, despite the reduced customer service at the Land Registry, the State body is set to increase its fees on May 1st. From that date it will cost £300 to register property transfers worth between £40,000 and £200,000, £400 for transfers in excess of £200,000, and £500 for transfers in excess of £300,000. Previously there was a blanket charge of £250 for any property over £30,000.

The chief executive of the Land Registry, Ms Catherine Treacy, said the buoyant property market had increased the volume of work enormously over the past few years.

She said the Land Registry was in "a very difficult position at the moment" and the decision to cut public opening hours was "done with great reluctance". However, freeing staff from public inquiries was the best way to cut the backlog in dealings, she said.

She said the intake of dealings had increased 47 per cent since 1993 but there had been no increases in staff during that period. This problem had been compounded by the introduction of decentralisation in 1997 which had resulted in the loss of 22 per cent of experienced staff who didn't want to move to Waterford. She said the Land Registry would be further stretched by the National Development Plan and public opening hours would probably have to be cut at the Waterford office in the future also.

She said the Department of Justice had sanctioned a request for extra staff and this was currently with the Department of Finance.